Maxmimum time for instand/limited timing mode?

[Ulb]

Using the instant/limited timing mode (timing mode 0) with long durations seems to convert them to absolute duration.

What is the maximum duration that timing mode can 'hold'?

Edited March 9, 2019 by Ulb

[Jarno Mikkola]

Are you talking about spells ? As in, .spl's 0x0012 offset in the Extended Header ? ... it's 10. Aka, a turn or in other words 6 seconds in real time.. if you play at 30 fps... set that to be 60 fps, and it becomes 3 seconds etc... . As the game measures things in frame switches.

[Ulb]

No, I'm talking about 0x0028 in an effect's header i.e. the duration of the effect.

Edited March 9, 2019 by Ulb

[subtledoctor]

I use 126144000 and it seems to work fine.  It's somethign like 9 in-game years. :P

[Ulb]

Hm, I tried 216000 before (should be 3 days in-game time, right?) and it went perma on me..

[kjeron]

All non-instant/permanent durations are converted to absolute duration.  Timing modes 0 and 3 get converted from seconds to ticks (x15), then added to current game time (in ticks).  Timing mode 10 is already in ticks, so it's just added to current game time (ticks).  Using timing mode 0, 3 or 10, it depends on how much game time has already passed - the farther along you are the lower the value it can hold without terminating instantly.

2^32 - 1 is the max value it can hold, and that value is in ticks, 1/15 second.  Game time is stored in seconds, and resets at (2^32 / 15) back to 0, because apparently time is cyclical.

If you just want an effect to last indefinitely without using the permanent timing modes (because of necessity):
Timing Mode 4096, duration = -1.

[Ulb]

@kjeron Thank you for the detailed explanation.

[Jarno Mikkola]

On 3/9/2019 at 9:40 PM, kjeron said:

2^32 - 1 is the max value it can hold, and that value is in ticks, 1/15 second.  Game time is stored in seconds, and resets at (2^32 / 15) back to 0, because apparently time is cyclical.

2

Just because you measure something to be between zero and something else, doesn't mean it's cyclical.. what that means is that your measure is cyclical. The difference is that you can't take back time. Also all the units used in time are cyclical... as what happens after the second and minute count becomes greater than 59 ? Same with bit difference in hours, days, months, years, decades, centuries and millenniums etc.

Even more fun is in, if you look into the big bang theory, and look at the start of the universe ... there the time is measured in seconds... trouble is there is no seconds by the current definition, as by it, a second is been defined as exactly:

"the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom" (at a temperature of 0 K).

Thing is, there's no way you can have caesium-133 at the start of the universe, as it has not been ... you know, materialized, let alone be at 0 Kelvin.